The Bitter in the Man
by TranceGemini613
Summary: Episode tag for 6x13, The Daredevil in the Mold.  Brennan stays at the Founding Fathers, getting drunk with Booth.  There is some omniscient narrating about Brennan's thoughts.  Rated T for drinking. 1474 words.


It was after midnight. The Founding Fathers was still loud, still full of people—it was a Thursday, but many of the graduate students at GW had no classes on Fridays and so did not need to go home. A majority of the professionals who ate there were finishing the drinks that went with their East-coast-late suppers. Then there were Booth and Brennan.

To say both were intoxicated was an understatement. Really, how else were they to be? Six or seven or eight shots in, Brennan realized that she had to stick it out. She had known that when she said, "Then I'll have a drink," and stayed, but as she got more and more drunk, she felt worse and worse—not about her decision, but about Booth and how he was feeling, and about how she'd basically volunteered herself to watch him shrink under the hurt and the drink. Why had she come to the Founding Fathers in the first place? It wasn't just because Hannah called her, in tears, and said, "Tempe, I'm sorry. Please, just...don't hate me. I couldn't say yes, Tempe, you understand, don't you? I'm so sorry. He needs you. Go find him, make sure he's okay, make sure...I'm so sorry." A babysitting job wasn't what Hannah meant, and Brennan knew it. She also knew how it would look to Booth. Temperance Brennan wasn't the Real Nice Gal type—she wasn't sitting around pretending support while waiting for him to notice her again. "Hannah isn't a consolation prize," Booth had said, and Brennan took it to heart. He had loved Hannah. He loved Brennan just as much, she realized, and he never stopped, even while he was with Hannah. It was a different sort of love.

Brennan's presence at the bar was as his partner and his friend, not as a potential lover, but he didn't know that. She knew he needed to be angry at her, at Hannah, at the world and the female sex and everything that went along with it, and so she took his assumption and let him hit her with it. Brennan just swallowed it. When he gave her those choices, she knew she wouldn't choose "find a new FBI guy". There was no other guy. There never would be.

As the crowd thinned more appreciably and the clock inched its scrawny hands towards one AM, Brennan carefully arranged her words so they wouldn't come out slurred. "It's time to go home," she began, and Booth snorted disdainfully. "It's time to go _home_," she repeated firmly. "I'm getting you in a cab if it kills me, and it damned well might," she added.

Booth looked at her, bleary-eyed but not confused. "I don't want your—pity. Your help...and pity. I don't _want_ them," he snarled in her direction, but the scotch and Jack Daniels had dulled his anger and hurt just enough that Brennan, even drunk, didn't take the sentiment to heart.

"I know. It's not pity. It's condescension," she managed to joke, "because you can't get yourself home. So be angry. I'm condescending." He shook his head but leaned on her as he teetered off the barstool and against her shoulder. Brennan was having a hard enough time standing up herself, but she used his weight as leverage to hold them both up. For a brief second, so brief it might have been accidental, Booth's face rested against her soft auburn hair. Then he scowled at her, at the bartender, and at the door in turn. They had a tab running; the bartender didn't need to take her card again. They were regulars here.

"Get home safe," he called after Booth and Brennan. She nodded and gently tugged her partner along out the door.

Once outside, Brennan hailed a cab within a few seconds, propping Booth against one of the large planters on the curb while she did so. Helping him inside, she got in as well. "Hey," he protested as she gave the driver Booth's address.

"I'm making sure you make it inside your door," Brennan clarified. Booth shut his eyes and shook his head angrily, but she thought she could feel some relief from him.

When they pulled up at Booth's building, Brennan helped him out of the cab and then leaned over to the driver. "I'll be back out in ten minutes," she said in an undertone, "and if I'm not, you can go. Here," and she paid up to that point in the last of her cash.

It was slow going to get her partner, larger and heavier than she, especially while drunk, up to his apartment and inside the door, but Brennan managed it. She helped him sit down on the couch. She started to take off his shoes for him, but he made a sound of frustration and she stopped.

"Come here," he slurred, and she did. Brennan sat gingerly next to him. He was unable to sit up straight on his own, but there were a couple of throw pillows, and she leaned over to push one next to his shoulders. Booth opened his eyes. He was still drunk, but now it wasn't angry-drunk. Now he was sad-drunk. The former sharpshooter, the rough-and-tumble FBI agent, the doting father, the caring partner, was also becoming the bitter old man. He'd meant what he'd said to Brennan about every woman he fell for not being interested in what he offered. The hurt was almost overwhelming. If she had left at that moment, he might have gone entirely over the edge and that would have been the end of the kind, incorrigibly romantic person whom Brennan loved.

"Is there just...something wrong...with me?" he asked her.

Slightly more sober than he, but not by a large margin, Brennan winced. "No. No, there is...nothing wrong with you. There is nothing wrong with women as a group, either, I think. It's just that you...you have such an open heart. I said that before, didn't I. It's a stupid way to put it," she added vehemently, suddenly angry at herself, at Hannah, at Rebecca, at anyone who had ever hurt Booth. "It's stupid because—because it implies that you somehow were open to getting hurt, too. And you don't deserve to be hurt just because you love more. It's not fair!" With a start, Brennan realized that she was crying. Booth sat up a little, the haze clearing from his eyes, and he leaned closer to her.

He touched her chin carefully but she jerked her face away. He lowered his hand. "Bones," he whispered, "Bones. I'm not angry at you. I'm not angry. I'm hurt, and I'm—all right, yes, I'm angry, but it's at everything. Not at you, not at...not at Hannah..." He choked on her name and then he was crying too, trying to keep from bawling like a baby, choking on the little sobs and swallowing on the bigger ones. When Brennan looked him in the eye, he couldn't help it. He reached for her and pulled her against his chest and then they were both sobbing, letting out the hurt and the anger and everything they had broken and ruined and rebuilt and fixed between them.

A long time passed before either of them could breathe for the hurting in their chests, for the searing pain in their hearts, and so when they finally looked into one another's eyes, something was different. There was still anger and frustration, but it wasn't the definition of them at that moment. Booth and Brennan were still a little drunk and now dizzy from crying. They were neither one very attractive, puffy-eyed and red-faced, and both had the beginnings of headaches which would make the coming day a particularly miserable one.

They had each other.

With calculated patience, Booth leaned over and kissed her on the lips, very gently and somewhat clinically. There was more to it than the physical kiss. They both knew that things weren't over, but this was just a beginning. Booth would need to get over Hannah—Brennan was no rebound—and Brennan would have to deal with the implications of that as well. Still, she kissed back, and as they relaxed into one another, it became the single most comforting thing either had ever felt.

Pulling apart a long moment later, Brennan sat up first. "We should—wash our faces, have some coffee..." Booth shook his head.

"We're not going to stay awake," he replied. "We should wash up, take some aspirin, and get some sleep. Otherwise...well, tomorrow's gonna suck either way." He tried to smile but it was more like a grimace.

"Should I...head home?" she asked, knowing what the answer would be.

"Stay," he said, so she did.


End file.
